The wear plates on this bucket were obviously worn. The way the wear bars were installed from the factory was not the best way. When the bars are installed parallel with the flow of the material they do not protect bucket well.

We removed the damaged wear bars and installed new wear bars perpendicular to the flow of material. The reason this configuration is better is the dirt (in this case) will get caught between the the bars and protect the bucket bottom. The material then is wearing against the hardened wear bars and dirt.

I repaired this “Remu” type excavator bucket for BlueIron, Inc. They had a job in Santa Cruz so I traveled there to work on the bucket.

The blade was obviously worn,

I cut it off and replaced with a new one.

The grinders were also worn and I hardfaced using tungsten powder.

Hardfacing is the overlaying of a harder material than the parent metal to help the existing metal last longer. There are several types of hardfacing. Some are designed to withstand abrasion which you would use in an application where the piece was subject to constant wear from dirt, sand, or gravel, etc. Others are designed for impact resistance which would be used in applications where the piece is used in crushing or chipping. The product I used is designed for high wear applications, it is a very specialized type of hardfacing and provides for excellent wearability.

A Front Loader Fork lift had a broken fork. Some folks say they don’t have much luck with welding the fork on a forklift back together. I do my best to not depend on “luck” to determine what I can or cannot do. There is a specific procedure to weld these together. First you must make certain the forks are parellel and they are lined up right.

Then preheat the forks to ensure the weld does not cool down too quickly as the forks are being welded. It is critical that the filler rod is tougher than E7018 because the forks are typically a medium carbon steel and tougher than mild steel, I used E10018.

Here I used the back of my truck to align the forks, as if the truck needed the additional weight on it, it held up alright.

This project was off Eight Mile Road in Stockton. Mark from Blue Iron, Inc., www.blueironinc.com, called and asked that I repair the cracks, there were several.

This was a crack around the lift pin boss

I used an air arc, or arc gouging process to clean out the crack. Sometimes the crack does not go all the way through the material and it is imperitive the crack is removed from the material or gouged out then welded up completely.

Same crack repaired.

Some welders like to use the Stick welding process , SMAW, to weld these cracks up typically a rod with the 7018 designation. This process is adequite, it provides a strong weld and when done properly the crack should not come back. However it has one down fall and in my opinion only one, its speed. I was able to utilize the wire welding process, FCAW, I used NR 232.

Anothercrack in the same bucket

Crack welded up

Another view of cracks welded up.

There were a total of 12 seperate cracks with a total of about 55 – 60 lineal inches combined. This project was completed 2 – 3 hours faster because I used the FCAW process instead of the SMAW process.